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This Week in Politics & Digital: The 2012 Battle Begins

There's still an entire year and seven months until the U.S. presidential election on November 6, 2012, but social media has already played a huge role in the burgeoning race.

Before this week, Mitt Romney had already announced his bid on YouTube and Tim Pawlenty had already joined the race through his Facebook page. President Obama also kicked off his reelection campaign with a number of digital initiatives.

Below, we've picked out some of the top announcements and news from the past week or so to keep you in the know, something we'll be doing weekly on Mashable.

President Obama Visits Facebook

Barack Obama stopped by Facebook HQ for a town hall meeting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. They asked questions about the economy, funding innovation and the future of technology and fielded questions from the live audience in attendance and over the web.

Facebook Lobbying Keeps Growing

Facebook has been ramping up its lobbying on tech-related issues, Politico reported. Facebook spent $230,000 in the first quarter of 2011, according to its lobbying disclosure. It's also brought on lobbyists like Cathie Martin and an outside lobbying firm.

"Silent" Speech Goes Viral

Rep. Joe Crowley delivered a "speech" on the House floor without saying a single word. The clip started to pick up steam and eventually went viral. It now has more than 250,000 views in a litle more than a week.

Lieutenant Governor of California Writes Book on Social Media

Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor and former mayor of San Francisco, signed a deal with Penguin Books to write about "the intersection of social media and government," reported the SFist.com. Newsom originally broke the news on his Twitter account. The book, which remains untitled for now, is slated for a 2013 release.

Obama Uses Facebook To Help Fund Campaign

Obama's MyBo — a personalized version of the Obama for America site — recently integrated with Facebook to make it easier to target individual communities and spur the grassroots micro-donations that helped him win the presidential election in 2008, reported Internet Revolution. The Facebook integration allows direct interaction between users with the campaign as a way to target communities with micro-segmented appeals and one-click donations from within Facebook.

What do you make of social media's role in modern politics? What U.S.-based social media stories made you take notice? Let us know in the comments below.

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